Orthogenic Cases XII. A Study of the Interplay of Personality
The Psychological Clinic Copyright, 1917, by Lightner Witmer, Editor. Vol. XI, No. 5 October 15,1917 :Author: Sarah Warfield Parker, A.M., / \ Philadelphia, Pa. {Continued.)
It was thus that Mrs. G. saw Albert when she stepped into our living room for the first time, early one June afternoon. Two steps led down from the wide doorway, through from the hall into the long room. Mrs. G. stood?I should say loomed? the open doorway at the top of the two steps. She was big,?a Woman of tremendous physique, a Viking woman. Indeed, at times, she called herself a Scandinavian, though most probably she was either a Russian or a Finn. A northern or eastern European she most certainly was?Teuton, Scandinavian, or Slav?and four years ?n this side of the Atlantic had left her still very foreign. She gave, standing there a little above him, an extraordinary lrnpression of poise, maturity, dominance. Yet she was still young? not more than thirty-five. In spite of her size there was grace in the Movement and shape of her hand and arm. Her skin was very white, not pale, but as the medieval romancers said, milk white; her lips, very red, and her eyes, clear blue. Her brown hair, coarse and stiff from the curling iron, was not pretty, yet somehow its very dulness blended into the general color of her. She was, moreover, Well-groomed, expensively groomed, with excessive care for detail, for finish.
As she looked down on Albert, fidgeting in his tight, ill-cut clothes, it was her face that eluded one. It was a face set in hard hnes of sheer force, yet one caught in it, too, a strange, alien quality of feminine charm.
It was the force, however, and not the charm that Albert saw that afternoon. The silly giggle died on his lips; he turned hastily, and went out by the screen door, slamming it behind him.
At last Albert was face to face with a personality stronger than his irrepressible freshness, stronger than his metropolitan conceit, stronger than his ultra-adolescent energy. Mrs. G. was a woman of dynamic will?a will of immense energy to attempt the impossible, of extraordinary power to dominate the mind and behavior of those with whom she lived.
Culture?particularly that degree and quality of culture which makes for social poise?was Mrs. G.’s criterion of values. In her heart of hearts, she despised all Jews, looked more or less superciliously on all Americans, swept disdainfully from her notice all who dressed, spoke, or acted commonly, cheaply?unless, indeed, one of these was in distress. Then a generous nature leaped impulsively to put all her energy, skill, time, and money at the service of the unfortunate.
Albert was a Jew and an American, common in dress, speech, and manner. Therefore, she despised him. At the same time, he was so incredibly the antithesis of all her standards that he challenged the fighting quality in her. Consequently, it was not many hours after she first looked down on him in the living room, that Mrs. G.’s dynamic will was set to tame Albert, to transform him. She set herself to train out of him all the inbred habits and impulses she scorned, to develop in him the feelings and manners which she appraised as of social worth. It was a task worthy of her strength ?this task of stamping out all that he was, of making him all that he was not.
Her attack was as vigorous as it was immediate. The initial attack gained impetus, too, by the fact that, in the beginning, all their impulses seemed so antithetical.
Albert, by choice, was never clean. Mrs. G. had a passion for cleanliness. Before breakfast on the first morning, she felt of Albert’s washcloth, towel, and tooth-brush, and found all three dry. A very grumbling, rebellious boy was called upstairs to strip, wash, and dress over again. Every morning thereafter, Albert was required to stay in the bath-room twenty minutes by the tiny clock in the leather case on Mrs. G.’s dressing table. In sheer desperation, he washed to kill time. Every afternoon at 5:30 he was required to take a hot bath. All this was contrary to the instincts and desires of most adolescent boys, and particularly contrary to the instincts and desires of Albert. Never on a single day was he allowed to miss his bath, or to curtail his morning ablutions. An iron hand was over him, a hand that against his instincts, against his will, was changing him from a general dinginess into a shining cleanness.
Albert ate with unmannerly eagerness, talked too gluttonously of food, and made rude comments about it at table. Though Mrs. G. shared his passion for the rich things of the table, and often expressed it frankly with a sibilant, “Dees ees good,” she despised the vulgar conspicuousness of this trait in Albert. Most of all she hated the unbecoming plumpness consequent on his tendency to overeat.
By the end of the first week, he was put on a single ration at dinner, and a diet of cereal, milk, and fruit for supper. In spite of himself, he was made to live on simple fare. He soon learned what to expect at table and invariably anticipated Mrs. G.’s refusal of a second .portion by a quick negative to his own request, “May I have another butter ball? No!”
The manner of Albert’s eating, too, was changed by tireless supervision of detail. He was required to eat slowly, indifferently, to turn the blade of his knife inward as he placed it on his plate, to use no knife with fish, to observe every detail of table etiquette? etiquette all too foreign, sometimes, for an American table. Nothing escaped Mrs. G.’s alert eye. Once she saw him toying with a potato on his plate. She exclaimed in broken, staccato English, “Stop turning him. He will be dizzy.”
Albert boasted of his superiority over the younger children, and with a toplofty air, assumed unwarranted equality with the adults ^ the house. Yet he spent the hour after the younger ones had gone to bed, like an impertinent little boy, in annoying the older people in the family. Mrs. G. had not been in the house many nights before Albert was “taken down from his high horse.” For one Week he was sent to bed with the children at eight o’clock, and found that he was not too old to be punished for impertinence by an occasional afternoon in bed.
Albert was careless of his appearance. Mrs. G., though she indulged herself at home when there was no company, was scrupulously careful in her attire outside the house. She tolerated no imperfections. The adjustment of her veil could not be compassed in less than fifteen minutes. If the dressmaker erred a sixteenth of an inch in the width of a tuck, the gown must be remade. Immediately, she turned upon Albert all this elaborate attention to detail that she showed in her own costume. Shirts, socks, collars, ties from home she threw aside as “common”?her first blow at Albert’s blustering confidence in the superior taste of all New Yorkers, and ?f his family in particular?and did not stint the time she spent at the men’s furnishing counter selecting the exact cut of shirt, the exact line of collar, the exact color of tie and sock that would most niodify the boy’s crude, fat appearance. She replaced with a decent soft hat the ridiculous brown derby which had given the final touch of the ludicrous to Albert’s appearance. She saw that his suits were pressed at least fortnightly, that he shaved daily; she taught him to shine his shoes, to tie his tie in a precise knot, to leave the top button of his coat unfastened. She made the barber cut out great quantities of his stiff, black hair, supervised the entire hair Cut, and subsequently sent him upstairs a dozen times a day to smooth with brilliantine the rebellious mop until at last it was changed to a glossy sleekness.
Albert was further trained into shape by exercise. He rode madly up and down hills on a rickety bicycle?rickety, because no bicycle could possibly stand more than two weeks of the kind of wear Albert gave it. He rode horseback, too, and as the summer wore on, came to look very trim and handsome in his riding clothes. He not only exercised; he worked. Albert hated physical work, and he had a boastful conviction that, as a rich man’s son, he was above it. He was, however, in the grip of something stronger than his own will. Mrs. G. was determined to combat his physical laziness, to break his cocksure confidence that his father’s money brought him immunity from labor and from coercion. He muttered sullenly, “I’m not a wop. My father didn’t send me here to be a gardener.” But in spite of his mutterings, he had to plow and dig, and weed in the garden; he had to mow and rake the lawn. The louder he protested, the more menial were the tasks assigned to him. He had to sweep the porches, to feed and water the horses on the coachman’s day off?and as final indignity?to black Mrs. G.’s shoes. “If my father knew I was made to be a bootblack and a stableman he would take me away from here,” Albert grumbled, “He didn’t send me here to be anyone’s servant. He wouldn’t stand for it.” As sole answer to his grumblings, he was given more horses to water, more shoes to black.
In those months, Albert hated Mrs. G. and all the things she made him do. He was fifteen and strong as an ox, and by nature, rebellious and irrepressible. He was old enough and strong enough to rebel effectively; he had mentality enough, and occasionally money enough to take “French leave” for New York. Only Mrs. G.’s tremendous will held him?a will with amazing power to dominate and to compel. With a black look, Albert called Mrs. G., “That Swede,” but he obeyed her. For the first time in his life he obeyed blindly and unconditionally. A single incident will illustrate the completeness of his submission.
One hot afternoon in August, Albert had been sent to rake leaves from the shrubbery over the edge of the hill above the creek. Presently, he came into the cool of the living room, mopping his face. “I can’t rake down there any more, Mrs. G. There’s a yellow jackets’ nest there.”
Mrs. G., unfamiliar with English, thought that “yellow jackets” were “little yellow birds.” She pointed to the door with a long arm and compelling finger, and her answer was a single guttural monosyllable : “R-r-r-r-rake!” Albert raked. After a little, he returned to receive precisely the same answer: “R-r-r-r-rake!” A third time he came back and still Mrs. G. had for him but one word: “R-r-r-rake!” And Albert raked! There was a magnificent thoroughness in Albert’s subjugation, that, in spite of his resentment, bred in him a respect for the force that had so mastered him. Inside the class room as well as outside Albert was subjected to a new regime of vigorous discipline. During the first few days in June, Dr Witmer himself worked with him. For once in his life the nervous wriggling boy did not move a finger. For the first time, he saVat his desk absolutely quiet.
[?, Dr Witmer, from his examination, concluded that Albert had been pushed too far ahead in geography, history, and arithmetic. Because of the picture of mental confusion which he presented and the conspicuous defect in persistent concentration of attention, Dr Witmer decided that some weeks of mental discipline must precede any attempt to give Albert additional information. Thoroughness and precision were the qualities which must be developed in him by the summer’s work. Albert had, as Dr Witmer remarked, a mind that “skims”. He must be given tasks that required exactness and completeness?tasks through which he could not skim. Above everything else, there was to be no “speeding up,” no attempt to cover ground. Every single point must be known exactly and thoroughly. The teacher’s motto, like General Grant’s, must be, “I’ll fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.” Dr Witmer’s outline for Albert’s work in the next few months, therefore, included:
(1) The memorizing with absolute accuracy of the definitions in Webster’s Abridged Dictionary, of words taken from Rice’s Rational Spelling Book?Fourth Year?a very few words each day. (2) The memorizing, word for word, of the illustrative sentences in Rice’s Speller containing the words studied.
. (3) The composition of original sentences containing the words studied. (4) Drill in penmanship in which precision must be rigidly insisted upon. (5) Simple stories like those in Aesop’s Fables and Baldwin’s “Fifty Famous Stories,” read and reread until every word and every sentence was read with absolute accuracy. (6) Oral and written reproduction of each story until he could reproduce the content of what he had read in a logical and comprehensive manner. (7) The writing of solutions of simple arithmetic problems, to exercise his reasoning faculty within the limits of his very elementary comprehension.
With this outline for work, Dr Witmer handed Albert over to a vigorous young woman whose discipline was more adequate to the situation than that of the man who had first taught him. Dr. Witmer, too, continued his close supervision of the work throughout the summer and from time to time took over the actual teaching for one or two hours a day.
Miss B. carried out the prescribed program energetically and faithfully. She made Albert work in the class room, and what is more remarkable, she made him work by himself outside the class room, an hour and a half in the afternoon, and sometimes an hour in the evening. To accomplish this, she had, at first, literally to follow him around with his work and force him to it. “There is nothing in the world,” she wrote, “that he minds more than to have to sit down and learn a thing alone.”
The work in memorizing was assigned to Albert for two reasons, In the first place, because of his defect in persistent concentration, he was unable to attend effectively to any material presented to him for learning. The completeness and accuracy of reproduction required in this task made it of disciplinary value in developing control of attention. This assignment was of immediate value, moreover, as a test of Albert’s capacity to respond to the attempt to teach. Though his receptive capacity for unit images was adequate and his retention of images or image complexes, once apprehended, was fairly good, his capacity for the organization of images into the complexes essential to understanding and to the learning process was so deficient as to constitute a positive defect in the trainability of memory. At first Albert was given new material to memorize as a means of finding out whether or not he could learn anything. The work in memorizing was continued because of its disciplinary value in training the attention and in exercising his meager mental capacity for the organization of images.
Each day Miss B. gave Albert eight definitions to learn. Any that he did not know he had to write ten times after dinner. This penalty was invariable and inescapable. During the first week or so, an hour or two after dinner went in the tiresome task of writing and rewriting definitions. This work began on the first day of June. It was the twenty-first day of July before Albert was able to recite correctly in the morning recitation the eight definitions assigned for the day.
It took him hours a day of hard study for at least a week to learn a simple paragraph of 63 words from the Fourth Year of Rice’s Speller?this in spite of the fact that he had a memory span of eight digits. Memorizing of words linked in a thought sequence, no matter how simple, was extraordinarily difficult for Albert. This buckling down to a mental stint, this holding of his attention upon a job was intolerable to the boy with his nervous flighty habits of mind and body. Nevertheless, the results indicated that with sufficient coercion and repetition, Albert could learn something. The immobility of Albert’s mind was apparent in his diction, and in the structure of his sentences. On June 3d five out of the eleven sentences Albert -wrote containing the words studied were incorrect, and June 4th, six out of twelve. The following random selections show characteristically how Albert handled the English language. They show his carelessness in misspelling familiar words, his crudeness in the use of prepositions, his incomplete comprehension of words and their usage, as well as his ability to compose some perfectly correct sentences. Here and there, too, they contain a comment on his environment, or a lapse into his boyish impulse to make puns.
I shall by the pad and pencels at the stationery store. The captain was the last person to descend the ship. A telescope is used to see distant objects. Mrs. G. is very particular. I returned back to Philadelphia. His conduct is very fashionable. That women does nothing but grieve. I know a teacher that is very stern. I have two heads, my fore-head and my own head. Most girls powder their noses to look pretty. Those people have been weeping of the loss of their son. The company are having a dialogue. The girl made a nice preface. Do you like veil? Dr W. always likes to make facts plain. Try to perceive around the houee. The butler has to wait upon at table. I heard that he told a fine speech. All baby’s must shed tears. By July 16th, he had so far improved that he made only two errors in writing twenty-seven sentences. Much of the success of this performance was certainly due to a gain in attention to the actual setting of the sentences down on paper; some of it, no doubt, to an understanding of the usage of the fourth grade words, that had been drilled into him, and possibly a minute residuum to the increasing adequacy of his image complexes.
To training in penmanship Albert responded more readily than to anything else. It appealed to him as sport, a race in which the goal was to overtake his teacher and equal the perfection and precision of the copy she wrote for him. With eye and hand and mind and interest all occupied upon a single task, his attention during drill in penmanship was more persistently concentrated than during any other period of the day. He followed each line with the minutest care. The specimens opposite show with what results he was rewarded.
Specimens one and four, entirely comparable in that they represent handwriting in the first draft of composition work, show clearly what a remarkable change three months of Miss B.’s teaching produced in his handwriting.
The results of this training were evident not only in his specific efficiency in handwriting, but in a general gain in precision of movement and manipulation. His practice in penmanship, Miss B.’s disciplinary teaching in the class room, and Mrs. G.’s discipline in the house, all united to produce in Albert a perceptible gain in neatness, in ability to arrange his own clothes, and to put a desk in order with some approximation to the mathematical exactness of position that Mrs. G. maintained for every article in the house.
Thus, drill in penmanship developed in Albert a certain precision of movement. Drill in memorizing definitions and paragraphs developed, far more slowly, some persistence of attention to verbal stimuli, and accuracy in reproduction of the verbal images thus established. The study of definitions, combined with the composition of sentences, developed precision in the comprehension of the meaning of words, and in their use as symbols of expression. The work in reading and in oral and written reproduction of stories aimed further to develop precision in attending to, imaging, organizing, and reproducing somewhat more complex material. In 1. From a Diary Written June 18, 1914. 1. From a Diary Written June 18, 1914. 2. From a Page in Copy Book Written July 7, 1914. 2. From a Page in Copy Book Written July 7, 1914. 3. From a Page in Copy Book Written Sept. 17, 1914 3. From a Page in Copy Book Written Sept. 17, 1914 AJU-OITCU OAAouti. 4. From a Composition Written in Sept., 1914. 4. From a Composition Written in Sept., 1914. the beginning he could not understand the proverbs such as “All is not gold that glitters” written in his copy book, nor the fables of the “Fox and the Crow,” and the “Dog and the Meat” until they had been explained to him again and again. Before he settled down to reproduce even the simplest story, he pursued his teacher all over the house with questions that showed he did not comprehend the story, even though she had read it to him several times and explained the more difficult points. No wonder he had not progressed in history and geography. He could not learn because he did not understand a single paragraph that he read. After a fable had been explained and re-explained, after he had told it and retold it orally, after he had written it and rewritten it, Albert at length understood it. During the summer he gained very little in this capacity to understand and reproduce. He required less explanation and on the second or third rewriting could reproduce coherently a story such as that of “William Tell,” or “Bruce and the Spider”?stories which second and third grade children appear to understand without difficulty. Finally, the aim in teaching Albert to write out simple arithmetical solutions was to develop some precision in reasoning,?that is, in the purposeful organization of images.
For the first two weeks he wrote dozens of simple one step multiplication solutions like the following:
If in one hour a boy can ride 10 miles, in 16 hours he can ride 16 x 10 miles = 160 miles. In the third week he passed to two-step solutions. If in one hour a man earns 20 cents, in 9 hours he will earn 9 x 20 cents = $1.80. If in one day a man earns $1.80, in 30 days he will earn 30 x $1.80 =$54.00. At this time Miss B. wrote, “Sometimes Albert can get the right answer but has great difficulty in writing the solution.” In the fourth week he was promoted to solutions a bit more complex: If in 1 hour a man rides 8 miles, in 7 hours he will ride 7x8 miles =56 miles. in 11 hours he will ride 11x8 miles =88 miles; in 12 hours he will ride 12 x 8 miles =96 miles; Together in the 3 days he will ride 240 miles. About the first of July Albert advanced to one step problems in division. In the sixth week he was writing with difficulty solutions such as this:
If one quart of berries cost 10 cents 8 quarts of berries will cost 8 x 10 cents =80 cents. If 8 quarts of berries are exchanged for 5 yards of ribbon and 15 cents, the ribbon is worth 80 cents ?15 cents =65 cents. If five yards of ribbon cost 65 cents 1 yard costs 65-^5 = 13 cents. In the middle of July he was working with simple fractions. Many, perhaps most, of these problems he had to be taught to solve. I find a note for July 14th stating that he had no idea how to do the problem: How many men will be required to do as much work in 3 days as 7 men can do in 9 days? By the end of September Albert could add, subtract, multiply, and divide fractions acceptably, and was writing solutions of the following grade: Three boys have 240 marbles. One boy has $ of the share, or 240 marbles -f- 3 =80 marbles. The second boy has of the share, or 240 marbles -f-4 =60 marbles. Together they have 80 marbles plus 60 marbles = 140 marbles. If the third boy has the remainder he must have 240 marbles ?140 marbles = 100 marbles. He had covered about 120 pages in Brook’s Standard Arithmetic. In the four months of work with Miss B., Albert gained enormously in both attention and understanding?an improvement which seemed to justify his beginning some work in geography. A glance through Miss B.’s notes, however, shows how deficient he still was in understanding: Sept. 26. He is reading Carpenter’s “Geographical Reader of Europe.” It is incredible how little he really grasps when reading. The story he wrote today shows considerable improvement in composition, writing, and punctuation, but not in ability to remember more points in the story.” On another day she wrote: “I told him what Mohammedan meant, and hereditary. One might as well save breath telling him things like this.” She noted that his concentration of attention was better. “He has greatly improved in being able to learn things in a shorter time,” but adds, “He doesn’t work by himself unless there is no escape.”
Too much credit cannot be given Miss B. for the work she did with Albert in that summer of 1914. In that time she laid the foundation for all the work that he did subsequently. In those four months she and Dr Witmer together made him settle down to work. His mental capacity was markedly increased, in that the nervous distractibility of attention which so interfered with his mental processes was distinctly modified.
Steadily during this summer of work and discipline Albert grew quieter and happier. Through the first months when he had been given more freedom, he had grumbled and criticised; but it seemed that the tighter the rein by which he was held, the less he fretted, and the greater his cooperation and good will. Because his days were full of work, he enjoyed with zest the horse-back rides, the pitching of quoits, the day at Willow Grove, the occasional picnic or moving picture show that relieved the monotony of his tasks. Because, too, he felt the change in appearance, in manner, and in mental grip that in spite of himself was being wrought in him, he glowed with a new sense of well-being and self-respect, and with a genuine respect, moreover, for those who had worked the change.
The outward change, the one that the boy valued most, was due to the will and personality of Mrs. G. In June she and Albert had met as two antagonistic forces. She despised him; he hated her. By September there was a difference in their mutual attitude. Mrs. G., seeing the boy transformed, step by step, into an individual, in appearance and behavior less unacceptable, came to tolerate him. She began to feel something, too, of the warmth that goes out towards one’s own handiwork. Albert, on his part, gave to her, perforce, his reluctant but genuine respect and admiration.
One day late in September, Albert’s father and sister came to see him. He had lost something of his obstinate assurance that his family were the acme of all wisdom and breeding; yet he had for them still, all the loyalty and affection which is so fine a characteristic of his race. He knew that in the past they had been ashamed of him, and from the bottom of his boyish heart he hoped now that they would see and appreciate in him the change for the better. Unfortunately they both came primed with the mother’s theory that Albert responded only to nagging and criticism. They expressed to us their surprise and pleasure at his improvement, but for the boy himself had never a word of appreciation.
After they had gone, Mrs. G. found Albert thrown full length upon his bed, sobbing passionately. Mrs. G.’s faults may have been stronger and more conspicuous than those of most people, but she was gifted, at the same time, with an extraordinary sympathy for the “under-dog,” and a tremendous will and power to help him up. “Lame dogs,” says Hugh Walpole, “find a warm home in Russia.” Mrs. G. had the heart of a Russian, and when she saw him there, the boy in whom was stirring the ambition to battle against his neurotic heritage, alone, hurt, unappreciated by those nearest to him, there rushed out to him all the rich impulse of her sympathy. Impulsively she stretched out her hand and let it rest a moment on his black head. “You poor baby!” she exclaimed.
Startled, surprised, Albert turned, and raised his eyes from the crimson velvet rose in the girdle of the chic blue taffeta gown, to her face,?the face in which he had seen so steadily since June the hard lines of the force that had conquered him. There for the first time he saw a new quality of sympathy and tenderness and the will to help. In bewildered gratitude he reached out to catch the hand that had touched him in pity, and kissed it.
From that moment the two were no longer antagonistic. The Viking qualities in Mrs. G. were fighting now, not against him, but for and with the boy she had made and was making. They were fighting together, now, against the criticism of his family, and indeed against the very dictum of society that might class him as inferior.
It was not long, therefore, before she took over his class room teaching. Mrs. G. had never taught; it was the very last thing she had either expected or wished to do. For it she had no specific equipment other than a keen intelligence and a splendid memory for the remarkably thorough education of the continental private schools. Of psychology she knew nothing, and delighted provocatively in dubbing it “Nonsense!” In this particular instance, however, she had a tremendous asset in the strength of her dynamic will to draw, to compel, if need be, to hypnotize Albert into normality. (To be concluded.)
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